Earth

On New Year’s Day 2020, New South Wales and Victoria jumped north by 5.9 feet. No, you did not miss an earthquake. The change is being made to fix a 5.9 foot inaccuracy that has crept into the GPS coordinates, caused by Australia slowly drifting north. Australian GPS was last updated in 1994, and the entire country has moved nearly six feet since then.

Australia sits atop one of the fastest-moving tectonic plates in the world. It moves about 2.5 inches north-east every year. “That’s about the speed your hair or fingernails grow,” says NSW Surveyor General Narelle Underwood.

In the days of paper maps that tectonic drift did not pose a real problem. That meant Australia could get away with the slight inaccuracy that has crept in since the coordinates were last set in 1994. But paper maps have gone the way of the dinosaurs; we use GPS now. And GPS notices. That's because GPS satellites precisely locate you on the surface of the Earth. Effectively the coordinate you have from your GPS has already moved 5.9 feet.

Add in the inaccuracy of GPS itself – it is accurate to about 16 feet – and that explains why you can sometimes open Google Maps and discover yourself trapped inside a building or drowning in a lake.

The project is handy for the average person, but its real value is in the future. Driverless cars, for example, need precise GPS data to know which lane they are in, and driverless tractors need to be able to get right up to the fence line without plowing it down.

Possible Preaching Angle: Everything on earth changes, including the mighty continents. But for believers there are three crucial foundational things that will never change: God doesn't change, His Word doesn't change, and His promises do not change. These are settled forever in the heavens.

Our existence on a Goldilocks planet in a Goldilocks universe is so statistically improbable that many scientists believe in the multiverse. In other words, so many universes exist that it’s not surprising to find one planet in one of them that’s just right for human life.

Other scientists don’t want to make such a leap of faith. They see this world as the result of intelligent design. That, however, suggests God. So, atheists seeking an alternative are following Oxford philosopher Nick Bostrom, who suggested that we “are almost certainly living in a computer simulation.” Neil deGrasse Tyson gave the theory credibility by saying it was a 50-50 possibility, and Richard Dawkins has taken it seriously. Elon Musk semi-popularized it in 2016 by saying he thought it true.

That raises the question: Who or what is the simulator? Some say our distant descendants with incredibly high-powered computers. One of the theory’s basic weaknesses is that, as Bostrom acknowledges, it assumes the concept that silicon-based processors in a computer will become conscious and comparable to the neural networks of human brains. Simulation theory has many other weaknesses, and those who understand the problems of both the simulation and multiverse hypotheses should head to the logical alternative: God.

Climate anxiety and environmental destruction have been added to the list of apocalyptic fears. Nuclear war is now no longer our only worry. A large group of philosophers and scientists in many fields are now proposing that our time on Earth should come to an end. What was once considered good—steady population growth, decline in global poverty, and rapid progress in health science and medicine—should now be looked at in a completely different light. According to an article in The Atlantic:

The Bible gives the negative commandment “Thou shalt not kill” as well as the positive commandment “Be fruitful and multiply,” and traditionally they have gone together. But if being fruitful and multiplying starts to be seen as itself a form of killing, because it deprives future generations and other species of irreplaceable resources, then the flourishing of humanity can no longer be seen as simply good. Instead, it becomes part of a zero-sum competition that pits the gratification of human desires against the well-being of all of nature—not just animals and plants, but soil, stones, and water.

If that’s the case, then humanity can no longer be considered a part of creation or nature, as science and religion teach in their different ways. Instead, it must be seen as an antinatural force that has usurped and abolished nature, substituting its own will for the processes that once appeared to be the immutable basis of life on Earth. This understanding of humanity’s place outside and against the natural order is summed up in the term “Anthropocene,” which in the past decade has become one of the most important concepts in the humanities and social sciences. ... It is a rejection of humanity’s traditional role as Earth’s protagonist, the most important being in creation.

A recent Angus Reid poll asked 1,528 Canadians for their moral perspectives on a wide variety of issues. Among the findings: while 51% thought that using plastic straws is always or usually morally wrong, only 20% thought the same of “doctor-assisted dying” and just 26% for abortion.

(People) are rejecting God’s Law and … are creating their own substitutes in an attempt to justify themselves (Jer. 2:13-14. Luke 18:9-14). Sure, I may have just had my elderly mother euthanized, and had my unborn baby aborted, but I’m a good person because I always use a bamboo, not plastic, straw. I’m doing my part!

Possible Preaching Angle:

The lawless trend this poll reveals provides Christians with an opportunity to contrast the sandy foundation of the world’s moral code with the Solid Rock (Matt. 7:24-27, Ps. 18:2). God’s Law versus the world’s morals--has the contrast ever been clearer? Let’s take full advantage of this time and opportunity given to us to bring many to him.

A bus driver became greatly irritated whenever he parked his bus at the parking spot at the midpoint of his route. The reason for this was the open field which was being turned into an unofficial litter dump. Since he had a seven-minute break between his trips, he decided to do something about the situation.

Taking advantage of his breaks through the day, the driver used the time to clear up the litter stage by stage into garbage bags. After some time, all the litter had been successfully cleared. Not stopping at that, he began to plant flower seeds on the land and soon turned it into a picturesque meadow. Learning of his creative efforts, many passengers would thereafter ride the extra distance with him to the parking lot, just to see the beautiful work he had done.

Possible Preaching Angle:

Would you be willing to do something beautiful today to make the world a better place to live in? An unknown author said, “Every job is a self-portrait of the person who does it. Autograph your work with excellence.” The Bible further says, “For we are God's handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do” (Eph. 2:10).

The world we live in now offers us a glimpse of the joys and pleasures that we will experience when God brings the new heaven and the new earth (Rev. 21).

In his book Heaven, Randy Alcorn explains, "All our lives we've been dreaming of the New Earth. Whenever we see beauty in water, wind, flower, deer, man, woman, or child, we catch a glimpse of Heaven. Just like the Garden of Eden, the New Earth will be a place of sensory delight, breathtaking beauty, satisfying relationships, and personal joy.”

We will not live in a sterile environment or float about among endless clouds with nothing to do. We will live on an all-new earth—just like this one, except free from storms, earthquakes, drought, floods, or any other disasters. Things will grow easily, and weeds and thorns will not exist. Animals will not harm us but rather look to us benevolently as their leaders and benefactors.

A garbage truck's worth of plastic enters the world's ocean every minute of every day. All told, humanity dumped up to 14 million tons of plastic pollution into the seas, and bits of it can found from the water's surface to its most extreme depths. You wouldn't know it looking over the side of a ship, since much of the waste has been broken down by waves and ultraviolet light into microplastics. But when researchers analyzed more than a million pieces of trash in the Pacific, 99 percent of it was plastic. By 2050, according to the World Economic Forum, there will be more plastic, by weight, in the ocean than fish.

Possible Preaching Angles: (1) Creation; Stewardship; Ecology—How are we taking care of the earth that God put in our care? (2) Sin—The glut of plastic is also a picture of sin—if we don't deal with it, our sin accumulates and becomes toxic.

In his book Hope Is Contagious, Ken Hutcherson shares a moment from his personal life that illustrates well the ability to foster joy in the midst of trying circumstances, even as he was battling cancer:

You can face anything in life—anything—and have that same inner peace and joy. And when you do, it's contagious. It lifts up everyone else around you. Isn't that the type of person you want to be? Instead of joining over and over again in the whining about how bad things are, just your presence shows others that, hey, life is still a wonderful gift we should all be enjoying.

[One day] I was relaxing in my recliner after having spent five hours in the emergency room the night before. I'll admit I was exhausted, and the pain medication wasn't working as well as I would have liked. I looked around and saw my family going about their lives as usual. Video games. Chores. Music. Laughter. My wife, Pat, was fixing breakfast. Even our new little puppy was settling into a comfortable routine and enjoying everyone's efforts to spoil him. A visitor stopped by to chat. Some friends from church surprised me with a birthday cake—I had almost forgotten it was my birthday. So there I sat, surrounded by so much goodness even as I'm feeling lousy. My favorite cake is staring at me, but I have no appetite. My eleven-year-old runs past me, and I don't have enough energy to grab him and wrestle him to the ground like I used to. I'm trying to have a conversation with my guests, but between the short night and the powerful pain pills, I can barely stay alert. And you know what I'm thinking? Can you imagine how close I am to being overwhelmed with what is happening to me?

The words practically shouted from inside of me: "Isn't God great? What a privilege to be his child!"

We live in a time when people have become extremely conscious of nature, its beauty, its wonders, its indescribable value. We appreciate our planet more than we did before. We realize that in a very real sense, the earth gives us physical life. It's not surprising, then, that some people take this truth one step further and regard the planet as somehow giving them inner life as well.

This worldview is reflected in one sad news story. The story called attention to an increase in the number of suicides that occurred in U.S. national parks. The article cited several examples of people who had committed suicide that year in a national park, including a 65-year-old university biology professor who "disappeared into Utah's Canyonlands National Park, telling relatives in a note he was returning 'body and soul to nature.'"

The idea of returning the body to the earth has a long Christian history. Dust to dust. Notice, however, that this man also viewed his death as a way of returning his soul to nature, as though nature had somehow given him a soul in the beginning and at death his soul would be reunited with nature.

How different a worldview this is from that expressed by Jesus, who as he neared his death on the cross said, "Father, into your hands I commit my spirit."

If you read history you will find that the Christians who did most for the present world were just those who thought most of the next … Aim at Heaven and you will get earth 'thrown in': aim at earth and you will get neither.

—C. S. Lewis, Irish professor, author, and apologist (1898–1963)

Only God knows precisely what happened at the moment of creation, but physicists are beginning to get a clearer picture, as described by writer Bill Bryson:

In a single blinding pulse, a moment of glory much too swift and expansive for any form of words, the [universe] assumes heavenly dimensions, space beyond conception. In the first lively second (a second that many cosmologists will devote careers to shaving into ever-finer wafers) is produced gravity and the other forces that govern physics. In less than a minute the universe is a million billion miles across and growing fast. There is a lot of heat now, ten billion degrees of it, enough to begin the nuclear reactions that create the lighter elements, —principally hydrogen and helium, with a dash (about one atom in a hundred million) of lithium. In three minutes, 98 percent of all the matter there is or will ever be has been produced. We have a universe. It is a place of the most wondrous and gratifying possibility, and beautiful, too. And it was done in about the time it takes to make a sandwich.

Dr. Seth Shostak, an astronomer with the SETI Institute, points out in his course "The Search for Intelligent Life in Space" what conditions favor the development of life in the universe:

The system's star ("sun") must not be a giant star, because these burn out too quickly before life can fully develop.

The system's star must not be a dwarf star, because such a star locks in the close planets, meaning "one side of the planet forever faces its sun, resulting in horrific weather and unlikely venues for life."

The system's star cannot be a double star, because the unusual gravitational forces created by a double-star sun might not allow stable planetary systems.

The system's star must not be a young star, because stars less than 1 billion years old have not had enough time, so astronomers think, for life to develop.

Ideally, the planet would have a large moon, which creates active tides.

The planet should have tectonic activity, which causes metals to be pushed up to the surface, since metals are valuable to technological civilization.

The planet should have a large planet farther out in its solar system, which by its great gravitational pull cleans the inner solar system of deadly asteroids and comets.

The planet should not have a highly elliptical orbit, which is unsuitable for incubating life.

For life to live on the surface, the planet must have an atmosphere. "Very small planets lose their air, and very large planets tend to sport poisonous atmosphere. Earth-sized planets are ideal."

And it just so happens that all these conditions fit our earth!

Genesis teaches that the creation of life on earth was a marvelously designed work of God. A recent article in Time, which speculates on the possibility of life on other planets, confirms the wonder of life on earth:

Evolutionary biologist Ernst Mayr, for one, considers the likelihood of life of any sort beyond our planet close to zilch. Says he: "The chance that this improbable phenomenon [the creation of life] could have occurred several times is exceedingly small, no matter how many millions of planets in the universe."

Paleontologists Peter Ward and astronomer Donald Brownlee agree. In a provocative new book, Rare Earth, they maintain that in most places beyond Earth, radiation and heat levels are so high, life-friendly planets so scarce and the cosmic bombardments—like the one that killed off the dinosaurs 65 million years ago—so severe that the only life-forms that might make it would be bacteria-like critters living deep in the soil. The odds against technologically advanced societies, they argue, are astronomical….

Even Geoff Marcy, the leader in the increasingly successful hunt for planets outside our solar system, feels that we may well be alone in the universe.

Alone? Not completely alone. Doesn't it all point to a Designer? Our earth's uniqueness is one more reason to believe in the One who created the perfect universe and a unique planet to harbor the crown of his creation.

Several years ago a scientist wrote an article entitled, "Seven Reasons Why I Believe in God." He said, "Consider the rotation of the earth. Our globe spins on its axis at the rate of one thousand miles an hour. If it were just a hundred miles an hour, our days and nights would be ten times as long. The vegetation would freeze in the long night or it would burn in the long day; and there could be no life."

He said, "Consider the heat of the sun. Twelve thousand degrees at surface temperature, and we're just far enough away to be blessed by that terrific heat. If the sun gave off half its radiation, we would freeze to death. If it gave off one half more, we would all be crispy critters."

He said, "Consider the slant of the earth." I think he said twenty-three degrees. "If it were different than that, the vapors from the oceans would ice over the continents. There could be no life."

He said, "Consider the moon. If the moon were fifty thousand miles away rather than its present distance, twice each day giant tides would inundate every bit of land mass on this earth."

He said, "Think of the crust of the earth. Just a little bit thicker and there could be no life because there would be no oxygen. Or the thinness of the atmosphere. If our atmosphere was just a little thinner, the millions of meteors now burning themselves out in space would plummet this earth into oblivion. These are reasons," he said, "why I believe in God."

As the methods of science achieved greater and greater triumphs, both theoretical and practical, the old picture of how things are, the picture derived from the Bible ... was replaced by a quite different one. The real world ... was a world of material bodies--as vast as the sun or as small as an atom--moving ceaselessly according to unchanging and mathematically stable laws in a fixed and infinite space through time, which moved with unvarying velocity from an infinite past to an infinite future. ... To have discovered the cause of something is to have explained it.

Ecological garbage is only the outward sign of moral garbage piled up in the hearts of men.